Duke of Sussex & Others vs ANL: thread 5

[bluegreygreen]

This is the fifth thread discussing the case Prince Harry (and 6 others) brought against the Daily Mail (Associated Newspapers Limited; ANL) for alleged unlawful information gathering (UIG).
The claimants were: Prince Harry (PH); Doreen Lawrence (DL); Liz Hurley (EH/LH); Elton John (EJ); David Furnish (DF); Simon Hughes (SH); Sadie Frost (SF). They were represented by David Sherborne (DS).
The defendant (ANL) was represented by Anthony White (AMW).

Judgement was handed down by Judge Nicklin on 7th July 2026.
All claims were dismissed.
Links to the summary and full judgement are below.
We are currently awaiting decisions around costs, with the next hearing due on 29-30th July.

The threads to date were thorough discussions of the evidence (so far as we were able to obtain it), with posters giving links and explaining their views.
Following the judgement, we discussed the judgement itself, the reaction, statements made by different parties and ongoing relevant issues.

We have mostly kept things civil by avoiding more general discussion on Royal Family members, which can become partisan, and trying not to be derailed from the main topic of the thread.

We have occasionally included (when things slowed with the title case) other cases or discussions with a specific theme of free speech/press freedom, particularly when related to those with money or power preventing others from speaking.

Links to previous threads
Thread 1
Thread 2
Thread 3
Thread 4

There was limited direct reporting from court after the celebrities gave evidence; what there we followed on this link
Sky news link to court case

Summary judgement

Full judgement

It sounds like they are turning on each other now - if he wasn't part of a campaign why was he exchanging e-mails about suing ANL with Hacked Off?

@CathyorClaire As well as ANL costs (of whatever amount) the claimants will have their own individual and common costs to pay.

At the time of the costs judgement that we keep referring to (Jan 2025) the claimants had already accrued costs of £4m and estimated that their future costs would be £approx15m. (Their 'capped' future costs were £4m.)

If their estimate was accurate, they may have £approx19m of their own costs to pay before thinking of ANL costs.

We don't know how much will be covered by insurance.

We also don't know if a proportion of that amount is 'no win no fee'. There is an FT article linked somewhere in the threads of an interview with DS which says he does these 'phone hacking' cases on that basis.

Exactly @Lunde - it makes no sense, and I'm sure Judge Nicklin will have the emails to hand for reference.

I went and found @bluegreygreen’s post from 22 July. The court document outlines each claimant’s estimated costs on both sides. DL’s NWNF expected costs were estimated at £3m for Sherborne et al. And ANL estimated they would spend £1m defending them plus £12m of common costs so her share of ANL’s costs is almost £3m. And that was when the ANL costs totalled only £19m and not the £34m they now apparently total. And she is presumably the one without insurance.

The judge was highly critical of the costs at this point and specifically mentions the hourly rate ANL were costing time at. So perhaps he won’t make the claimants pay the full £34m they are now saying it cost for the defence. It’s such a mess. It seems the only winners will be ANL’s lawyers.

Honestly…my knee jerk reaction…someone is crapping their pants as the reality of consequences finally hits home….so sorry Simon …if we casual observers could see you had no case , what is your excuse?

The article that @HoldMyWine's quote comes from is today's DM article here

https://archive.is/s9Y3O

Best sentence:
The judge said there would 'be time for reflection for Sir Simon Hughes to review how the case was conducted and the extent to which it doesn't meet the objective he was looking for'.

If their estimate was accurate, they may have £approx19m of their own costs to pay before thinking of ANL costs.

So the £4.5m estimate discussed last night isn't the end of it and there's a further £2.7m (based on seven? claimants) each to find?

Those speaking engagements are going to have to do some heavy lifting...

SH is C5. Interestingly his case was estimated to cost £4m to prepare which is the most of any claimant. But the ANL estimate of the costs to defend it was the smallest of any of the claimants at only £900k (excluding common costs).

That seems odd unless a lot of time and cost was spent trying to make a case ready for court but it was very easy for ANL to refute. But he wasn’t campaigning against or targeting ANL.

That is interesting (re cost to prepare SH's case) @Choux. I wonder why? There were fewer articles used in his case.

You've gone into it in more detail than I did - I just looked at totals!

And she is presumably the one without insurance.

I've been thinking about this. I suspect the one without insurance is EJ - he can probably manage without it so wouldn't want to waste money on it (the premiums are probably fairly high).

There were also several firms of solicitors involved

Claimant Solicitor Firms

• Hamlins LLP: Acted as a lead legal firm for the group, specifically representing Prince Harry (The Duke of Sussex) and Sadie Frost.
• Gunnercooke: Represented several other co-claimants in the action, including Sir Elton John, David Furnish, Elizabeth Hurley, and Baroness Doreen Lawrence.
• Taylor Hampton Solicitors: Also involved as part of the broader legal network supporting the claimants.
• Lead Counsel: Prominent barrister David Sherborne led the legal team in court for the claimants.

Do we think the ATE insurance may try to wriggle out of Mr Mischief's deal on the basis he was caught out over the extent of his contact with Charlotte Griffiths?

I would hope so , I’m not holding out much hope, he always seems to slither out of being held accountable for his lies and behaviour 🤷‍♀️

I wondered if they could also wiggle out on the basis they were not told about the legal negligence of Anjlee Sangani surrounding the retracted Gavin Burrows statement where she did not witness it being signed but delegated the pivotal statement to convicted hacker and Hacked Off "researcher" Graham Johnson, to organize the statement and its signing - even giving Johnson an official e-mail from her solicitor's firm.

The insurance industry is watching the case closely as After The Event insurance which is what they had is priced “at the outset based on limited material, sometimes no more than counsel's opinion and pre-action correspondence, long before any trial judge has ruled on conduct or credibility. Most policies contain conduct-based walkaway clauses, meaning a finding that a claimant's strategy involved improper conduct can put cover at risk independently of whatever costs order the court eventually makes.”

“Why it can be withdrawn: most ATE policies contain conduct-related exclusions. If a claimant's own conduct during litigation is found by a judge to fall outside accepted norms — leading, for example, to a punitive costs order — insurers may argue the policy no longer responds, since the risk they priced at the outset assumed ordinary conduct, not conduct a court later finds improper.”

https://www.insurancebusinessmag.com/uk/news/professional-liability/could-prince-harry-lose-insurance-coverage-after-court-loss-581983.aspx

Yes, that's the article I was looking at yesterday.

The interesting bit (I think) is that the limitations finding (for SF and SH) might affect the others because of their common argument.
What I missed in it was any comment about the legal team behaviour (such as @Lunde's comment about Sangani) - would that affect the claimants' insurance?

I think it was on the previous thread that someone said the insurers were in court every day.

i think the whole witness and signing of the Gavin burrows statement is dodgy. This was done by the solicitora.

That seems criminal

Any criminal proceedings against the plantiffs and their dodgy team would sure void the insurance

I guess one way of reducing costs would have been for the claimants to reduce the number of claims they brought. The vast number meant an extensive trial
lasting 45 days. That’s always going to be a huge cost! The number of barristers involved was huge too. DS is not a KC, but others were. The legal teams of barristers was extensive and for 45 days plus all the prep and strategy, it’s a massive cost. I’m not sure the extent of the case was fully known at the costs hearing judgement in 2025. However certain elements of it could have been dropped and therefore not defended.

That's true - the trial was very long, and ran over by about a week, didn't it?

I take the point @Choux made about Judge Nicklin saying ANL's lawyers were charging high fees - there could be an element of unreasonableness there.

In yesterday's Press Gazette report they said Associated said in turn that the trial “deviated in several respects from the assumptions on which the claims were budgeted” - which would definitely increase costs.

The other cost that might not have been fully appreciated at the time would be the cost of the 2 year trawl for documents by ANL.

Mail report on Simon Hughes’s message to the court via barrister Mr Bacon.

https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-16017149/Prince-Harry-privacy-phone-hacking-court-case-Daily-Mail.html

It makes me think. Obviously Hughes is trying to untether himself from the other claimants - but is this for himself, or for the benefit of the others? Given his particular ‘conduct’ liabilities regarding the ATE insurance and the indemnity costs application, is he in fact attempting to take one for the team? (And someone will quietly cover his share later, having gained from this strategy overall.)

Interesting thought @AnAutumnCrow. If the insurers are making noises about conduct of some or all of the claimants and validity of the policy it makes sense to try and separate each claimant. Particularly if the ‘policy’ is actually six policies so do not all have to be treated the same (how do we know only 6 of the 7 are insured? I couldn’t find a source. Is it possible EJ and DF who are married and listed their costs jointly in the screenshots I posted above are on a single policy so there are 6 policies but all 7 are insured?)

Will we see Harry and the rest in yet another court case to try and get the insurer to cough up - ‘Harry (Prince) and the Insurer of Stone’?

I've been surprised there isn't more about this. I don't think anyone has denied the claim of forgery? Is this not going to be looked into?

@bluegreygreen ANL needed to do this to defend all the claims. Fewer claims, less cost but the claimants wanted money. Harry had not won all previous cases against the press and the volume was to get a proportion of them to stick. The claimants used this strategy and had used it before. Hugely costly to defend though.

I’m thinking it was especially costly to defend with claims coming from so very long ago. This involved ANL employing people to trawl through archive stores and analyse large volumes of hard-copy and digital material. In a legal context, that’s no job for an unskilled person.

And these older claims were only allowed to proceed because of some decidedly ‘creative’ arguments around limitations, one of which - Simon Hughes’s - the judge identified in particular as problematic in terms of conduct of the claimant’s side.

It’s all connected in my mind.

The sums involved are incredibly high though! Beyond my ken.

I suggest that the huge number of claims was very intentional to massively overload and overwhelm so that ANL would have to have done the math on cost investigation of all 94 and then forced to settle as it would be financially more expedient. But they fronted it out.

Quite. Why each claimant wouldn’t pursue only their strongest 1-3 claims is a mystery. Surely a NWNF legal team would advise that to avoid doing work less likely to lead to a win. Unless as you say the strategy was to not actually get to court and just get a settlement.